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MAX Files

As Medicaid plays an increasingly central role in U.S. health care, it will be imperative to conduct national studies to analyze the costs and quality of care delivered to program enrollees and to understand large-scale changes in the prevalence of disease among the Medicaid population. The essential tools needed for these analyses and understanding are the volumes of patient data generated across the country in claims files called Medicaid Analytic eXtract (MAX) files.

The Working Group

The Medicaid Working Group at the University of Chicago will be among the first to use a national panel of MAX files to assess program-wide performance and disease prevalence both at a single point in time and over several years. The working group’s findings will allow state Medicaid programs and federal policymakers to understand how shifts in the external policy environment are impacting the care of Medicaid beneficiaries, and will additionally facilitate efforts to identify opportunities to improve the coordination of resources for the growing Medicaid population.